Scenes From a Liberation
by SabaceanBabe
Summary: It’s the day of the liberation of New Caprica. A celebration of epic proportions is underway throughout the RTF. But not everyone is celebrating... A Helo/Athena fic with a side of Thrace/Anders


Title: Scenes From a Liberation

Author: SabaceanBabe

Rating: PG-13

Word count: 21,345

Characters: Helo/Athena, with Starbuck, Anders, Adama, Boomer, Roslin, Maya, and more

Spoilers: through Exodus, pt. 2 and yet it's really quite AU, having been thoroughly jossed by season 3

Disclaimer: not mine, don't sue.

Author's note: This was written for the _first_ Sweet Charity Fandom Auction for repr0b8 and I started it in April of 2006. In fact, a good deal of it had been written well before s3 started in the hope that I'd get it posted before the premiere, but then I started getting spoilers and some of those just knocked me out of the water and I had to get myself jump-started again. Anyway… His request: (it's a detailed request, so feel free to skip down to the fic) It's the day of the liberation of New Caprica. The human population on the planet has just been rescued, and the fleet has successfully jumped away; a celebration of epic proportions is underway throughout the RTF. Both Helo and Sharon played important but separate roles in the mission, with Sharon having been paroled by Adama to help with the rescue. But the two of them are still apart, and their relationship is in limbo. Sharon has asked Helo to stay away for all the obvious reasons: seeing him reminds her of Hera, not wanting to hurt him anymore, believing their relationship has no future, etc. And Helo has obeyed her wishes for the past year+, while secretly trying to make her life as bearable as possible, and still very much in love with her… loving her from a distance, just like he did before the war started. So the celebration is in full swing, with plenty of drinking and toasting. Karl is of course dragged into the center of this, while Sharon watches from the periphery. And while everyone is partying, the two of them are still without the one thing they each want: Hera for Sharon and Sharon for Helo. I'd love for Adama to interact with Sharon on a very "human" level, and Kara to interact with Helo, sensing his detachment and trying to encourage him. And now the tricky bit that I can't figure out. Individually, the two of them slip away from the party and somehow end up in the same place to be "alone" (maybe a Raptor?). They talk, talking leads to a kiss, kissing leads to more than a kiss. Yeah. It can be as explicit (or not) as you like, I'm okay with anything from PG-13 to NC-17. The mood I'm hoping for is one that things are not okay, that these two are still hurting badly, but that they are going to get a 2nd chance, that they are going to try again. That they still love each other deeply. I tried to hit on as much of this as I could. Hopefully, I succeeded, for the most part. I couldn't have asked for better betas – leeinlimbo, lizardbethj, and lyssie. They kept me on track, made me tighten up when I rambled (don't laugh – there were huge chunks of text cut out of this), and generally made this a much better story than it would have been otherwise. Oh! And before I forget, some of you may have read bits and pieces of this before as a WIP, but it's pretty much all different now, so don't be afraid that you've already read it, if something looks familiar.

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Amid the chaos of battle, the last ship still capable of flight, _Colonial One_, finally lifts off from the surface of New Caprica, but Sharon doesn't see it. She's too busy dodging Raiders and weapons fire, trying to get her load of injured refugees to the nearest "safe" haven – _Galactica_.

"Colonel Tigh!" she shouts over her shoulder, never taking her eyes from the viewport. The new carbon composite skin of the Raptors might prevent the swarming Raiders from getting a lock on them, but it won't prevent those Raptors from colliding with any of a hundred Cylon ships, if their pilots aren't extremely careful. _It's worse than trying to navigate an asteroid field._ _At least asteroids don't fire missiles at you, hoping for a hit_, Sharon thinks sourly before shouting again, "Colonel!"

A Raider cuts across her path and she slams her stick hard to the left to avoid one of those collisions as Tigh falls into the co-pilot seat, knocked from his feet by the evasive maneuver. More than one voice cries out in pain and fear behind her as the small ship responds more enthusiastically than she expects – it's the first time she's flown a Raptor in combat and she's not used to the controls. She spares Tigh a glance before returning her attention to keeping them all in one piece.

"She's dead." His voice is cracked and rusty as though he hasn't spoken in days. The desolation of it forces her to focus on his face. His visible eye is red, bloodshot, but she knows this time it's not from drink as his gaze darts back and forth between her and the rear of the ship. Sharon hadn't recognized the blonde he had carried aboard, had never met her, but the woman had been badly injured, and there had been blood everywhere. Even now, she sees it smeared on the Colonel's jaw and neck, soaked into his sweater.

"Colonel, I'm sorry." Sharon knows he won't believe her, but she truly does regret his loss. "I'm sorry, but I need you to go to the back, to the ECO station. I need to know what countermeasures we still have on board."

He hesitates for a moment, eye narrowing. "I'm half-blind and no ECO…" Unspoken but clear in his tone and demeanor is the thought that he won't take orders from a Cylon.

"No, you're not an ECO." Her tone is sharp when she continues. "But you know your way around a dradis and I assume the loss of half your vision doesn't equate to the loss of half your brain."

A missile flies beneath the Raptor and explodes just in front of them and Sharon can't spare any more words as she fights to dip around and below the shrapnel. A few seconds later, she brings her small ship back on course.

"_Sharon, are you alright?"_ Even through the Raptor's tinny and inadequate speakers, Helo's voice is worried and she can't help a small smile. He has always worried about her, done things large and small to make her life easier, even when he believed she would neither acknowledge or appreciate it. Sharon knows that it's making him a little crazy, that there's nothing he can do for her now.

xxxxx

Sharon lay on her cot with her hands crossed over her stomach and stared at the ceiling, lost in memory. Every day was the same with only a few interruptions to vary the routine.

Sometimes the interruption was a visit from Helo, who still came to her every day, though most days he couldn't stay more than a few minutes at a time. His duties had increased as more people left the fleet for the planet below.

Sometimes it was Kara, come to talk about their mutual past as she tried to understand how Sharon could be the person she'd known for years while at the same time completely different. They both knew the Viper jock tried to trip her up in the details, but it never worked and gradually a new friendship had sprung to life.

Sometimes it was Corporal Mathias, who occasionally played cards with her during a guard rotation, joking that it was more difficult for Sharon to cheat with the glass wall between them than it was for her fellow marines when they were face to face.

And sometimes, there were no interruptions to the monotony at all.

More and more frequently, Sharon dreamed of Hera. Dreamed that she saw a world through Hera's eyes, that she _was _her little girl, alive and growing up on a gray planet surrounded by gray people, a world lacking in sunlight and devoid of warmth.

The worst dreams were those that came while she was awake and aware; after each waking dream it took her longer to recover and always left her shaken. The dreams were mercifully brief, but they were more intense, more _real_ when Helo visited her. She wasn't sure how much more she could take.

Sharon thought that maybe she should speak to Doctor Cottle, that he might have something that could take the dreams away. A humorless smile crept across her face as she thought that maybe he could just give her something that would make it _all_ go away, but no. No. She didn't want to die anymore, she simply wanted to be left alone.

A rap on the glass broke into her thoughts and she looked over at the window. Helo held the receiver in his hand, smiled as he waved it at her to pick up its counterpart on her side of the glass. Although she wouldn't let him see it, not now and not ever, her heart broke a little each time he came to her, and she didn't know how much more of that she could take, either.

Keeping her face impassive, she returned her attention to the ceiling – she knew every rivet and seam by heart. Helo rapped on the window once more, the sound louder, sharper. She swiveled her head on the pillow until she could see him in his blue uniform; his smile had disappeared. As she watched, he frowned a little and mouthed the words, "Talk to me."

For a long moment, she closed her eyes. Her fingers clenched into fists, but then she forced both her hands and her eyes to open and pushed herself up from the cot. She swung her bare feet to the deck, slowly stood, and walked over to Helo. She made no move to take the handset.

His voice muffled by the safety glass, she heard him without the aid of the handset when he demanded, "Pick up the phone." His eyes blazed with a mixture of anger and disappointment. Her heart felt like lead in her chest. She couldn't continue to do this, day after day, no end in sight. Steeling herself, she lifted the receiver.

Before he could say anything, she cut him off. "Helo, I don't want you to come here anymore." His mouth snapped shut. He looked a little stunned, confused, but she went on, afraid she would lose her resolve if she didn't do this now. "I want you to leave now and don't come back."

"_Sharon, what the frak is this?"_ His knuckles were white, he gripped the handset so tightly. _"You don't mean that."_

Sharon understood his refusal to believe her. She had shut him out of her life before and he had pushed his way back in. This time was different; this time she wouldn't let him back in. She had loved him so long, and that love had brought them nothing but pain.

Nor could she bear to see him, day after day, and not touch him. It was killing her inside, just as the dreams were. She had been more than a year in this cage; Adama would never let her go.

"Helo, I _do_ mean it. Go away. There's nothing here for either of us."

With a laugh that didn't reach his voice, and a tight smile that didn't reach his eyes, he took the handset away from his ear, but almost immediately brought it back up. _"Well, that's just great."_ He couldn't hide the hurt.

She had to end this, end it now. Before the pain became unbearable. Before she broke and changed her mind, because he was her strongest link to life and sanity. She carefully replaced the receiver in its hook and turned her back on him.

A memory of another time, a similar situation nearly six months earlier, skittered through her mind and she was surprised when Helo didn't pound on the glass and shout at her, as he had then. When she lay back down on her cot, she risked a glance at the window, but Helo was gone. She curled up on her side and closed her eyes, but neither sleep nor tears would come. Thankfully, the dreams stayed away, too.

xxxxx

The first time Corporal Mathias returned to duty after Sharon asked Helo to stop coming around, she unlocked Sharon's cell and motioned for her to step away from the entrance. Sharon only backed up a step or two, but that was enough for Mathias; she set a portable music player on the floor near the cot and tossed a nylon bag to Sharon, who caught it.

"What's this?" She looked at Mathias, rather than the bag.

Mathias looked down at the player and smirked. "Looks like a pony to me."

Startled, Sharon laughed and opened the bag, pulling out several music chips that she knew had once belonged to Boomer. She looked a question at the Marine corporal, who shrugged.

"Captain Agathon asked me to give 'em to you."

"_Captain_ Agathon?" Sharon's heart beat faster in her chest.

"He didn't tell you? He was promoted and made CAG a few days ago, when Captain Thrace retired. I guess he hasn't been back to see you because he's been busy." Mathias clearly didn't notice how sick Sharon looked. At least, she thought she must look sick, because she felt like she was going to vomit. The woman continued with a grin, "He told me the CAG has a little more pull around here than a mere pilot, so there's going to be a real bed delivered later today."

Sharon forced a smile, although she feared it might be more of a grimace. A bed. Something that would no doubt be more comfortable than the cot she'd slept in these past months. And the rations she'd been given these last couple of days had more variety and taste than what she'd become accustomed to, as well. She closed her eyes and turned away from Mathias.

"Sharon? You okay?"

xxxxx

"We're okay," Sharon reassures Helo. But then there is another missile. Another rough evasive move. A man – she thinks it might be Anders – groans, his pain-wracked voice drifting up from the deck behind her. She bites her lip, eyes glued to the _Galactica_, growing larger in the viewport as they draw nearer, but there are more and more missiles coming closer to finding them. The Raiders know that if enough missiles are fired, one will eventually find a target.

"_Dammit, drop a swallow or something!"_

Sharon hears the frustration in Helo's voice and turns toward Tigh. "Colonel, I wouldn't ask if I didn't need your help. Sergeant Mathias is the only other person on board with any combat experience, but she doesn't know electronics or countermeasures."

Tigh's voice is closer to normal when he replies. "All right, I'll do what I can." He rises as another near miss rocks the small ship. He grips the back of her seat hard to keep himself from falling and then he's gone, weaving his way to the ECO station, past the half dozen or so injured men and women laid out on the deck, past the body of his dead wife.

A flash of movement in front of the Raptor catches Sharon's eye as a Raider silently screams past, closely followed by a Viper sporting a _Pegasus_ insignia. The stream of bullets let loose by the Colonial pilot slices the Raider in half in a spray of sparks and metal and blood.

"One down…" Mathias' voice offers from just above her head.

Sharon flashes her a quick grin, relieved by her steady presence. "Only three hundred fifty-seven to go." She doesn't know how much of that number is an exaggeration.

"That old bucket of bolts has _never_ looked so frakkin' beautiful," she says as she drops into the seat Tigh so recently vacated.

"If you're staying up here, Gunny, you'd better strap yourself in."

xxxxx

Sergeant Mathias ushered Sharon into the Admiral's quarters, interrupting an ongoing discussion. Helo and Dee were on the couch, leaning toward the low table in front of them, which was layered in photographs and maps. His back toward Sharon, Apollo gestured with jerky movements toward those same maps; he looked over his shoulder when the hatch opened. Adama himself sat in an armchair that formed an "L" with the couch. A floor lamp between the two pieces of furniture illuminated the table.

Mathias began to back out, pulling the hatch shut behind her, but Adama stopped her. "Sergeant."

"Sir."

"Lieutenant Burrell has recommended you for this mission. Stay." The Marine stopped, surprised, but quickly regained her composure. She stepped further into the room, pulling the hatch closed behind her. Straightening, she stood at parade rest and Adama seemed satisfied.

The Admiral gestured for Sharon to take a seat on the couch. "Sharon, join us," he invited. She felt very much out of place with the battlestar commanders and their executive officers. _At least I know Erin's as uncomfortable as I am._ Rather than joining Dee and Helo, Sharon took the few steps necessary to reach Apollo's side and looked down, her gaze caught by what looked like an aerial photo of a tent city.

She frowned. "This is New Caprica."

"Yes," Adama confirmed.

She looked over at him, as did Dee. She felt Helo's eyes on her, but couldn't bring herself to meet his gaze and so she concentrated on the Admiral. "A rescue mission?" she asked.

"Why is she here?" Apollo, beside her, interrupted before his father could answer. There was no mistaking which "she" he referred to and his question mirrored her own misgivings. Lee Adama was never easy around her, but she supposed she couldn't blame him for that. At least he was civil to her, something that could not be said for everyone she had to work with.

"Sharon is here because I asked her to come." Adama looked at Sharon. "Sit, please." His tone brooked neither protest from her nor argument from his son. Apollo raised his hands in surrender. An unreadable expression on her face, Dee moved closer to Helo to make room for Sharon, acting as a buffer between her and Helo, and so Sharon sat, grateful to the other woman for her sensitivity. But then, that had always been one of Dee's strengths. Mathias remained, an impassive observer near the hatch.

"Why _am_ I here, Admiral?" Sharon asked.

"I believe that you can provide a valuable perspective on this mission." He glanced at Lee, still standing, before returning his attention to Sharon. "You're not only an experienced Raptor pilot, but you have a rare expertise in evading the Cylons."

She glanced quickly at the Admiral's face. As always, his features gave no clue to his thoughts, but over the months she'd been on _Galactica_, she'd become accustomed to his subtle humor. Leaning forward to look at the reconnaissance photos of the tent city – _these must have been taken before the Cylons found us_ – she laughed. "I suppose you could say that."

xxxxx

"Dammit, drop a swallow or something!" Helo's focus is torn between the enemy targets all around them and the blip that indicates Raptor Three, Sharon's Raptor, drawing nearer to her destination, but nearly obscured on his dradis by a swarm of swirling Raiders.

"Cut her some slack, Helo," Starbuck shoots over her shoulder. "Her ECO is here with me."

He hears the almost cocky confidence in her voice, the belief that Sharon can handle her bird and land her safely on _Galactica_, and feels oddly reassured even as their ship shudders when a missile explodes out of kill range just above.

A rapidly moving light on the dradis draws Helo's eyes. "Got one on our tail, Starbuck. Nine hundred meters and closing." Taking his own advice, he presses a button. "Releasing a swallow," he reports, and then looks up at the overhead readouts. "Six swallows remaining." Another quick check of the dradis. "Frak. Starbuck, drop to vector… two seven three!"

"Wilco." The Raptor drops like a stone and then flattens out again. The missile that had burst without warning from the cloud of dradis interference surrounding New Caprica shoots harmlessly past, to become in its turn a cloud of rapidly expanding, dissipating flame as it collides with a Cylon Raider.

Helo toggles the microphone on his console – there had been no time to don flight suits and helmets in the rush to escape the planet's surface. "_Colonial One_, Helo. Do you copy?"

Static briefly fills the interior of the Raptor. _"I'm here, Captain."_

"Do you have the jump coordinates?" Just as she had been the last ship to lift off from the planet's surface, _Colonial One_ is the last non-military ship still in-system. Once she's away, the two remaining Raptors and half dozen Vipers can rendezvous with _Galactica_ and get the hell out of this godsforsaken part of space. He glances at the blip of Sharon's Raptor, still surrounded on dradis by enemy blips, but he sees through the forward viewport the tracers of _Galactica_'s great guns and breathes a sigh of relief – she's within the bubble of safety the old battlestar can provide. Another burst of static. "Say again, Goddard. I didn't catch that."

"_Repeat, we have the coordinates. Two minutes to jump."_

"Roger that, _Colonial One_, Helo out. Racetrack, Helo. Did you catch that?" Waiting for her response, he suddenly feels as though he's being watched. A quick glance over his shoulder and he meets former President Roslin's gaze. Her arm is around Maya's shoulders and the younger woman is clearly frightened, but Roslin is as steady as Helo has ever seen a civilian in combat and it comes to him that she is no more a civilian than he is.

"_Yeah, Helo. I copy,"_ Racetrack returns, pulling his attention back to the board.

"Unless you hear otherwise, give it another minute then follow Raptor Three in." At that moment, another explosion sends the Raptor into a tumble.

Helo and Starbuck simultaneously shout, "Frak!" Helo reaches above his head, the movement pulling uncomfortably at the half-healed gash on his arm, and flips a series of switches. Starbuck fights the suddenly sluggish stick to regain control of the Raptor. The passengers grab onto anything they can to keep from tumbling from their seats.

"_Helo! Starbuck!"_ Racetrack's tinny voice exclaims.

"_Starbuck! I'm on him!"_ Hotdog cuts in._ "Can you… duck?"_

"Hotdog, you're an ass," Starbuck fires back. "Just shut up and shoot the frakker already!"

Helo grins at her and silently thanks the gods that Hotdog made it off New Caprica.

xxxxx

"Helo!"

He turned to see who shouted his name and searched the faces of the people in the compound, most of whom talked in small groups save for four men playing a game of pyramid. There, dodging past a knot of people gathered around a rusted and well-ventilated barrel, heat-shimmer distorting the air above it, was Louanne Katraine. Moving at a less explosive pace, Brendan Costanza followed.

Helo waited for Kat to reach him, not wanting to risk moving too quickly and setting his head to pounding again. He reached up to touch the knot above his left eye, the scab crusted over the tear in the skin, as Kat skidded to a breathless halt and grabbed at his right arm to steady herself.

"Gods, am I glad to see you!" She laughed, the sound at odds with their gloomy surroundings, and threw her arms around him. He hugged her back – she and Hotdog had been on leave the day the Cylons had come back and Helo'd wondered if they were lost forever.

He didn't say anything right away and her smile faded as she took in the civilian clothes, the head wound, and the lack of weapons. He could see it in her eyes when she understood that he wasn't here to rescue them, but rather was a prisoner like all the rest.

"I'm glad you two are alive and well," he said as Hotdog joined them. Costanza lifted his hand for a salute, but changed it to an offer of a handshake in mid-motion, eyes darting around the compound. Helo grasped his hand tightly for a moment. "Lieutenant." He released the man's hand and looked again at Kat. He kept his voice low – there were no flashes of sunlight on chrome, but Hotdog's body language told him there must be spies within the camp. "Kat, sitrep."

She straightened. "Not good, Captain, but stable." A quick glance around and then she gestured for them to move toward the center of the yard, away from the gathered groups of people, closer to the makeshift pyramid court. "How did you get here?"

Helo laughed. "You first." She and Costanza had been on the planet for four months; who knew how much of that time had been in the hands of the Cylons? He wasn't about to tell either of them anything that could compromise the mission further than his own capture might have already done.

Her raised brow and the quirk to her lips told him that she knew it, too. "The toasters started rounding people up the day they landed. Those of us who weren't quick enough to make it to the hills were sorted into categories. Most were let go after being recorded in some kind of census. Others…" She shrugged and then made a broad gesture that encompassed the yard in which they stood, the surrounding barracks, and the double-row of barbed wire that surrounded it all. "The frakkers may call it a farm, may have us working out in the fields, but… That canyon out there? It's called Breeders' Canyon."

Frak. That explained why they hadn't been all that concerned that his name wasn't on their list – they'd simply assumed he was one of the ones who hadn't been caught in the first round, or even the second, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing. It also explained the extra scrutiny they'd given him, once they knew who he was, particularly the bitch who'd called herself D'Anna Biers on _Galactica_. A breeding camp…

He looked sharply at Kat. "You're not…?"

"Pregnant? Frak, no." She shot a quick look at Hotdog; Helo didn't miss it when she reached behind her back and Hotdog took her hand. "As far as I know, they haven't had any success yet." One brow quirked, she looked back at Helo. "Not _here_, anyway," she quipped. Hotdog shoved her from behind and she took a stumbling step toward Helo. "Sorry, sir."

"No offense taken, Kat." He laughed, humorless and a little bitter. "After all, I'm the original Cylon lab rat." Changing the subject, he asked, "Are there any more of us in here?"

"No. Brendan and I are the only Fleet."

Again looking around at the other people in the compound, Hotdog stepped up beside Kat, closer to Helo. "We may be the only military here, Captain, but we're not the only ones who might be willing to fight."

Helo nodded. "Good." He let his eyes wander over the compound, pausing here and there on the gates, the barbed wire, the Centurions standing just outside the fence, two women talking over a fire pit, the Pyramid players. If he and Kat and Hotdog could make it out of here and hook up with Sharon and the others, if Sharon had been able to make contact with Tigh's resistance then they still had a chance. And if they could manage to take a few of the others with them, create some chaos along the way, all the better…

"Is this as secure as it gets for a private conversation?" If they couldn't talk, they'd have to work out a plan some other way. He smiled at the thought of passing notes as though they were in high school, but the smile faded quickly at the sound of servos and the murmurs of "frakking toasters" that came to them from across the compound. All three turned to see the standard formation of Cylons walk through the gate: a biological, in this case a copy of D'Anna Biers, flanked by two Centurions. Helo raised a hand. "Hold that thought."

Biers scanned the crowd until her gaze rested on Helo. He felt cold when they started toward him, Biers' eyes never leaving his. A smile stretched across her lips and grew as she drew closer. He shivered.

"Helo," she said warmly, stopping in front of him. The Centurions moved to flank all three humans, but their focus was Helo.

xxxxx

"You people in back, hang on!" Starbuck shouts and sends the Raptor into a tight arc away from Hotdog's shot, leaving only the offending Raider in its path.

"Dammit, woman, this isn't a Viper!" Helo laughs.

He feels Roslin's eyes on him again. "Are we going to make it, Captain?" she calmly asks when he looks over at her.

"We're sure going to try."

He turns back to his instruments and watches as Sharon's Raptor disappears from his dradis. "Raptor Three is aboard _Galactica_," he reports, feeling the near-suffocating weight lift. Sharon is by no means safe, but she and her passengers are closer to it now than those in his Raptor. He gives Kara a thumbs up, and she gifts him in turn with a thousand-watt Starbuck grin – Anders is aboard Sharon's bird with the rest of the wounded from the final group of refugees.

"Racetrack, head in. Hotdog, keep two wingmen and stay with us; the other three are with Raptor Two." He pays no attention to the responses other than to note that they're affirmative. "Starbuck, basestar on dradis."

"I see it."

"_Colonial One_, Helo. How much longer?"

"_Jump in twelve seconds… eleven… ten… nine…"_

"Starbuck, six swallows out. Take us in." It'll take them about the same amount of time, with Starbuck driving, to make it to the _Galactica_ as it will for _Colonial One_ to jump to safety. He prays that their remaining swallows will be enough to confuse the dozens of Raiders and the two nearby baseships for the few seconds they'll need.

xxxxx

Sharon watches, tension coiling in her gut, as a scorched and scarred Raptor makes an elegant landing, quickly followed by three Vipers. The hangar bay doors remain open and she sees the flashes of multiple explosions in the distance. Nervous energy, nauseating in its intensity, screeches through her body until she begins to move, if only to keep from exploding.

She wants to pace, but has to settle for tapping her fingers against her thigh because there's too little room and she doesn't want to stray far from Sam's side, not until one of the (too few) medical personnel is with him. Trying to stay out of the way of the deck crew swarming over her Raptor, Sharon's attention strays again and again to the open bay doors and the vast stretch of black space beyond. But there is still no sign of Raptor One and she swallows her fear.

Light flashes again beyond the doors, this time accompanied by a ball of flame that rapidly disperses. There is no sound, only that brief flare, and she prays that it wasn't a Raptor, that it wasn't _him_. She squeezes her eyes shut.

Behind her Tyrol shouts at someone, "You, there! Whoever you are! Get that 3C cable up here!" If she weren't feeling so sick, she'd laugh; some things never change. She opens her eyes and again focuses outward, beyond the hangar. _Please, God. Please. Bring him back._

Another nearby voice rises above the din of alarm klaxons and people. "Somebody give me a hand here!" Sharon turns and sees a familiar woman – one of the Chief's former deck crew, Seelix – attempting to get a shoulder under Colonel Tigh, who has fallen from the ramp to the deck, carrying the body of his dead wife from the Raptor. Tigh looks old, used up; he looks like a man living a nightmare.

A groan draws her back to Sam, lying on the deck beneath her Raptor's wing where he's less likely to be tripped over. Crouching down, she says, "I'm here, Sam."

"Kara?" His voice is weak but clear.

"Not yet. They're still out there."

Sam's eyes close and Sharon thinks he's unconscious again until he whispers, "They'll make it, Sharon." His face crumples with a wave of pain but then clears. "They'll make it."

"What the _frak_ are you doing?" Tigh's voice overhead is hostile.

Straightening, Sharon turns to face him and Seelix, both watching her with animosity. The patch that covers Tigh's right eye and the skin around it is smeared with new blood and she wonders if it's his or his wife's. The cord holding the patch in place pulls so tight that the skin beneath it, thin and fragile-looking, puckers.

"I don't want a frakking Cylon touching any of my men," Tigh hisses.

The loathing in his voice stings more than the words. "Well that's just too damn bad, Colonel. There isn't anyone else to help Sam right now." Sharon meets Seelix's gaze and the other woman looks away, toward Tigh.

Moving with deliberation, Tigh straightens his sweater with a sharp tug. The pain in his remaining eye is palpable as he stares at her and Sharon realizes that some of the blood on that sweater is indeed his own.

"Why didn't you go back where you belong when you had the chance?" he snarls at her. Not waiting for a reply, he pushes past her and crowds her aside as he bends down to see to Anders.

"I _am_ where I belong," she whispers to the back of his head.

xxxxx

Sharon relaxed into the relative comfort of the chair that had been delivered a few days ago; she no longer bothered to keep track of the passage of days since she had pushed Helo away. She knew the little comforts that appeared now and then were from him, but he never came himself. It had been weeks since she had last seen him, had last heard his voice.

Legs curled beneath her and a book on her lap, another gift from Helo, she stared at the pages but didn't see them. Instead, as her fingers absently caressed the paper, her attention flitted from splash to splash of bright color. She bounced along, held in the arms of a woman who made her feel safe and warm, who took away fear when it jumped at her from the shadows. Sharon knew it was an hallucination, but it took her out of her cell, so she allowed herself to sink into it. It wouldn't last long, the visions never lasted more than a minute or two, but for that brief time she was free.

A flash of blue and a whiff of something sweet and smoky drew her further into the vision, even as it abruptly faded and she dropped back into the reality of her cell. Realizing that she wasn't alone, she blinked rapidly and tried to regain her equilibrium. As her awareness of her own body returned, she shifted, felt the pins-and-needles sensation in her legs that sometimes came with being in one position for too long and wondered at the length of this newest hallucination. It had seemed only a handful of seconds, yet her body felt as though it had been hours.

Bare feet connected with the rug beneath the chair and Sharon squeezed her eyes shut for a second before reopening them; the action helped her to focus. The door to her cell stood open and a man filled that opening. Her heart skipped a beat as she surged from the chair. Before she took more than a step toward him, her brain finally processed the data her eyes had given it: he was too short to be Helo.

"Admiral Adama." Her pulse pounded in her temples from the adrenaline rush of surprise. Disappointment settled like a stone in the pit of her stomach.

"Sharon," he greeted and gestured for her to sit back down. Rather than return to her chair, she stepped away from it and sat on the edge of the bed, offering the more comfortable seat to him. When the very young guard, a man she didn't recognize, locked the door behind the admiral, she bit back her questions and waited for Adama to tell her why he was here.

He surveyed the cell, noted the rug, the chair, the table and lamp, the currently silent music player, the footlocker at the end of the bed. A real bed, not a simple cot. His eyes finally rested on Sharon, his face giving nothing away. Then he offered her the faintest of smiles and lowered himself into the chair she had vacated, seemingly as at home here in her cell as he would have been in his own quarters.

"You look well," he observed.

She responded with a shrug. She looked no different now than she had when he'd last visited her cell, when he'd asked her if she'd be willing to give up the other Cylons in the fleet. But then it occurred to her that when he had been here last, she had been pregnant. _Maybe I do look a little different._

Adama seemed to have the same thought. "I'm sorry about your child."

The statement took her by surprise. Emotion warred with intellect as the part of her that had known him for years, served under his command, said that he was telling the truth while another part of her, the part that trusted no human save Helo, screamed that he had been a party to her baby's death.

Something of that internal struggle must have shown on her face. "I know you don't believe me, Sharon, but it's the truth."

"You and Roslin tried to have my baby aborted." Her fists were so tightly clenched that she felt the sting as her nails split her skin.

His expression didn't change, but a flush crept over his face. "That was a mistake."

The silence that followed was extended and awkward. After a time, Sharon began, "Admiral…"

But her voice trailed off when Adama lifted the book she had been reading. He looked at the leather spine and then turned to the marker of the pages at which she'd been staring when he'd entered the cell. "This was always one of my favorites." His voice was almost wistful. "How are you enjoying it?" The lenses of his glasses flashed as he lifted his gaze from the book to look at her.

Sharon opened her mouth to tell him that it was well written and thought provoking and all the other trite phrases that came to mind from countless book covers, but then she stopped. He waited patiently for her opinion, as if he truly cared what she, a Cylon, thought of his favorite book, and she was struck by an astonishing realization. "The book is yours."

"Yes."

"I thought it came from Helo."

Adama nodded once. "Most of this did come from him, yes, but a few of the books are my own."

"Why?" She didn't know what to think. There was such a history of distrust between them, and yet he had not only known of but condoned Helo's provision of the comforts in her cell, and had also loaned her several books, including his favorite. Sharon knew how important books had been to the Old Man before the war, just as she knew that now those precious books could never be replaced.

The admiral sighed and carefully returned the book to the table. "I've had no choice but to keep you locked in this cell, for your own protection as much as for our peace of mind." He gestured toward the book. "I suppose this is a form of apology."

Shifting in his seat, he leaned forward and rested his arms on his thighs. Sharon felt a subtle change in the atmosphere and she thought that he must have reached the purpose for this unexpected visit.

"Why did you say nothing about Brother Cavil?"

She licked her lips. She hadn't expected that question. "I told you I wouldn't betray the others."

"The other Cylons in the fleet, yes. And I understood your decision. But by protecting Brother Cavil, you put Helo in jeopardy."

The angle of his glasses and the lights overhead acted together to obscure Adama's eyes behind a wall of opaque reflection; she couldn't see his intent in his eyes, couldn't hear it in his voice. "I would never put Helo in danger."

Another shift and she could see the dark blue of his irises beneath the lenses. "And yet you did."

Sharon shook her head, not quite able to grasp what was going on. "Helo is a good man, a good officer. You would never have harmed him."

"Your decision to remain silent about Brother Cavil put Helo in a precarious position. He had already been under suspicion of treason, and it was he who recommended you for that mission."

Drawing her legs in toward her body, Sharon wrapped her arms around them and rested her cheek on her knees. She closed her eyes. "I didn't think about that." Remembering that time, so soon after losing Hera, she felt the prick of tears behind her closed lids. "I guess I… I guess I didn't really care about anything, then." The only memories she had of that time weren't truly memories at all, only impressions – strong impressions – of pain and loss, not just of her little girl, but of everything she had hoped for and dreamed of.

Adama shifted again but said nothing and Sharon wondered what went through his mind even as she tried to make her own a blank, not wanting to experience those emotions all over again. The silence stretched.

The Admiral broke that silence. "I'm offering you a limited parole."

Before, when she'd first seen him in the opening to her cell, Sharon's heart had skipped a beat. Now it felt as though it stopped for several seconds before pounding so hard in her chest she thought Adama must be able to hear it. She lifted her head slowly until she met his clear gaze.

Dozens of questions scrambled for precedence, but only one demanded an answer. "Why now?"

Adama leaned forward in his chair, elbows to knees, and clasped his hands together. "We've heard nothing from the Cylons for months. While I do not believe they're no longer a threat to us, I also don't believe that you'll tell them where we are."

A small laugh escaped her. "I couldn't even if I wanted to." She studied his familiar features, so harsh at times and yet capable of comfort as well. "What about keeping me locked in here for my own protection?"

"Most of those who might be inclined to dispute your right to exist have gone planetside. Those that remain can be managed."

Sharon wanted to ask him if Helo had anything to do with his decision, but she didn't. Instead she asked, "You said a limited parole?"

"Yes. You'll continue to sleep in this cell and spend most of your off-duty time here." He leaned back into the chair, seeming more relaxed, as if he had somehow been apprehensive of her reception of his decision.

"Off duty?" Sharon frowned.

"With an armed escort, you'll be permitted to travel to and from CIC as well as the rec room and the gym." He paused, watched for her reaction to what he'd said so far. "I want you to optimize our scanners. And I want you to create a cryptographic program that will break Cylon codes."

Her eyes narrowed and she studied him in turn. It didn't escape her that he was asking, not demanding. "You want me to help you set up some sort of perimeter alarm."

"If the Cylons find New Caprica, I want to know about it."

"I'm a Cylon."

"Yes." Still watching the Old Man's face, she saw his expression soften slightly, the creases at the corners of his eyes deepen a fraction, although the smile never reached his lips.

xxxxx

A shout rises above the cacophony in the hangar. "Clear the deck! Raptor One's coming in hot!" Eyes wide, Sharon whirls around in time to see a Viper streak past the open bay doors. It fires, running interference as Helo's Raptor comes hurtling toward the _Galactica_, flames streaking behind, the ship wobbling wildly.

Although the wobble increases, the speed of the ship visibly slows as Starbuck kicks in what the pilots jokingly called the "emergency brakes" – engines in full reverse followed by a full shutdown. It generally caused the complete destruction of the engine involved, but it was better than crashing through the opposite side of the hangar, causing explosive decompression and loss of atmosphere.

Instinct pushes her to run to Raptor One, but Sharon forces herself to stay where she is. She knows she'll only be in the way if she tries to go to him and there is nothing she can do to help. Instead, she holds herself very still and she waits.

Across the hangar, the bay doors close and a man in a yellow jumpsuit manually pries open the hatch of Raptor One; from the amount of smoke that pours from the opening, Starbuck is lucky to have landed it in one piece. Sharon squeezes her eyes shut for a moment and then returns her attention to the task at hand – since her presence is no longer welcome near Sam, to keep her mind from her fear, she helps with the wounded.

Turning her back on the smoky drama, Sharon slips an arm gently under a woman's shoulders, eliciting a hiss of pain. "Shh…" she says, "I'm taking you to help." Her voice is pitched to slide below the chaos that eddies around them. Her ears are attuned to Tyrol's shouted directions as he takes charge of unloading everyone from Raptor One and getting the fire under control. Spotting two men pushing gurneys as they make their way through the melee, Sharon slips her other arm beneath the woman's knees.

"What are you doing? You can't lift me!" There is panic in the woman's voice.

"Yeah, I can," Sharon responds as she does just that, as gently as possible. The weight is negligible, but their positions could be better. Sharon lurches to her feet as the woman reflexively throws her arms around the Cylon's neck.

Even as Sharon regains her balance, a voice announces, _"Secure decks. Five seconds to jump."_ Making sure she has a secure hold on the woman in her arms, she follows the men with the gurneys through a hatch and into another corridor, which is just as crowded as the hangar. Injured men and women line the bulkheads on both sides, leaving a clear path down the middle. The overhead lights flicker and Sharon heads for an open spot in which to lay her charge, before the brief disorientation of the jump overtakes them.

With barely any hesitation as the wave of the jump flows over them, she quickly reaches her destination and squats down, leaning forward to gently lay the injured woman in the open space. When Sharon starts to pull back, the woman doesn't let her go, her arm still wrapped around Sharon's neck and shoulder. Startled, Sharon looks at her.

The woman stares, wide eyed, and Sharon thinks she must have hurt her in spite of her care. "I'm sorry if I hur—" she begins.

"You're a Cylon," the woman states.

Caught off guard, Sharon bristles, but then she realizes that the woman's tone isn't hostile, as Tigh's had been during their recent confrontation. She licks her lips and affirms, "Yes, I'm a Cylon."

"But, why are you helping us?" Confusion and pain cloud her eyes.

Sharon needs to get back to the hangar, needs to make sure that Helo and Starbuck and the others are okay, but she wants to answer the woman. She feels that she _has_ to answer her. "Because I choose to." She offers the woman a half smile and briefly touches her hand before straightening, leaving her there to await her turn in the queue.

More than a minute has gone by since the jump. Sharon reaches the hatchway as a man announces, jubilation evident in his voice even over the intercom, _"We are free and clear. Repeat, we are clear. No sign of Cylon pursuit."_

A wave of relief washes over her at the announcement; a wave of guilt quickly follows. Someone pushes roughly past her, also returning to the hangar from the impromptu infirmary in the corridor, and she grips the hatchway hard to keep from stumbling. A cheer goes up from the hangar, echoing behind her in the corridor.

The smoke from Raptor One has cleared, for the most part, with only a few lingering wisps still trailing from the ship. All around the hangar, people laugh and hug each other, the fear of mere moments ago seemingly forgotten.

Across the hangar, first Helo and then Starbuck emerge from the Raptor and pause at the top of the ramp, side by side, searching. Sharon is certain that Kara looks for Sam; when she spots him lying on a gurney, a slight improvement in his situation from when Sharon left him with Tigh and Seelix, Starbuck pushes past Helo and bounds down the ramp, dodging between and past the intervening revelers to reach his side.

xxxxx

Sharon paced back and forth like a caged cat, the floor gritty beneath her boots. To relieve boredom, she varied her pattern, just as she had in the old days when she had been stuck in her cell with nothing to do and no one to talk to. The difference was that these cell walls were made of rough rock instead of glass and steel, and there was neither door nor hatch to prevent her escape. No, the only things that prevented her from leaving were the dozen or so armed humans just outside the cave and, much more important, the knowledge that something had happened to Helo. He and the marine with him hadn't made the rendezvous, and Sharon suspected these people might know something about that.

A lantern, oil rather than electric, hung from a hook sunk into the rock next to the opening. Its placement kept her from seeing anything past its light, but would allow anyone watching through that opening to keep an eye on her. The amorphous shape of the chamber itself left her no place that a watcher couldn't see with minimal effort. She wondered if the others were in similar "cells" or if, being human, they were allowed to remain together, or perhaps even permitted to go free.

Time passed as she paced. She zoned at least once, imagining herself in a room full of children, their voices high and piping and somehow comforting. After a time, other voices, one male and one female, drifted through the opening. The woman's voice belonged to one of those who had brought them here, and the man's voice sounded familiar as well.

"Sam," she greeted as he entered the chamber. Momentary relief flooded through her; Sam Anders wouldn't kill her out of hand, even if he didn't look pleased to see her.

His eyes traveled over her, took in the dusty civilian clothes and the hair that had long since fallen out of the tail she usually wore. He frowned. "Sharon?"

"Yeah, Sam, it's me." She looked past him to the cave opening, but could see nothing in the gloom beyond.

"How?" His voice was cautious.

"Is Kara here, too?" This had to be one of the resistance camps they'd hoped to contact; Sharon couldn't imagine Kara Thrace – Kara _Anders_ – just rolling over and submitting to Cylon rule, even if she had come to accept a Cylon as a friend. But Sam shook his head, his guard not slipping.

"No, she's not. Answer my question, Sharon. How did you get here? You're lucky my people didn't shoot you on sight." He crossed his arms over his chest, and her eyes were drawn to the winged tattoo; one half of a whole, the tattoo was the symbol of Nike, the humans' goddess of Victory. Starbuck had laughingly proclaimed that a wedding ring was too damn boring, and that they'd wanted something a little harder to ignore.

Sharon shook her head and looked down at the dirt floor. Glancing back up at Sam, not bothering to keep the irony from her voice, she said, "We're here to rescue you." He snorted at that and she grinned. "Really. The Admiral knew there'd be a resistance and we suspected that it would either be literally underground, or based in the caves riddling the hills. He sent a group of us ahead to scout things out and try to make contact."

Sam leaned back against the wall and watched her for a minute. She stared back at him, and raised one brow in challenge when he said nothing.

"I know why your _group_ is here," he eventually said. "Edmondson already told me all that. I want to know why _you're_ here. Last I heard, you were still under lock and key on _Galactica_."

Sharon frowned again. "Racetrack…?" Edmondson and her group were to have remained with the Raptors. If they were here, then no one was guarding the ships. And where the frak was Helo? Her eyes met Sam's again; his expression was as hard as the walls that surrounded them. She choked back the words she wanted to say, the questions she wanted to ask, and shifted mental gears. Rather than talking to a friend she hadn't seen in months, she had to remember that she was dealing with a combatant who wasn't certain she was a friendly.

"Sorry. I was sent on the mission because I'm a Cylon. I can go where the rest of you can't and at least have a chance of not being detected." She smiled ruefully. "It seems I blend."

He nodded. "Guess that makes some sense, yeah."

She took a step toward him; eyes on her, he made no move, and Sharon got the sense that although he was cautious, he was not at all afraid. "How have things been? Since…" She let her voice trail off. _Since my people came here? Since the Cylons found you?_ No matter how she phrased it, the words would only point out that she wasn't like him, that she _was_ like his enemy.

Cocking his head to one side, he gave her a half-smile. "People are getting a bit twitchy these days. The toasters seem to be gearing up for something big." He raised an eyebrow and pushed away from the rock wall, took a step toward her. "Know anything about that, _Sharon_?"

"How would I, _Sam_?"

His smile grew, not quite reaching his eyes. "Aren't you wired in?"

She blinked twice, for the first time unsure of herself. "You know better than that." He'd known who and what she was since long before Starbuck had returned to Caprica for him. He and Helo and Barolay had talked at length with her after Starbuck had been taken, coming up with a rescue plan. "I told you at the high school that it doesn't work that way." It bothered her more than she liked to think that he no longer trusted her, and through no fault of her own.

But then he grinned, once again the friend she'd hoped to find on New Caprica. "Good to see you again, Sharon."

And she wanted to hit him. Hard. "Bastard."

He laughed and took the long step necessary to pull her into a hug. She squeezed him tightly, but not enough to cause him any damage, though she still kind of wanted to. Finally, her voice muffled by his shoulder, she asked, "Have you seen Helo?"

Sam drew back a little so that he could look at her. "No. Racetrack mentioned that you guys had to run."

She pulled away from him, needing to move. She'd prayed that the resistance group might know something. "Centurions attacked us. Just a small party of them, but we split up to lead them away from our landing point."

"My people heard the noise and went to investigate," he nodded. "Not long after the firing stopped, they came across a couple of slagged chrome jobs, and then Racetrack and her group."

"But not Helo."

"But not Helo," he confirmed.

"And Kara's not here?"

He lifted his arms and then let them fall to his sides. "No. Kara's been missing for months. I don't know where she is, or even if she's still alive."

"Oh, Sam, I'm so sorry."

He didn't respond to that, save to clench his jaw. Then he turned abruptly and headed toward the cave opening. Leaning out past the light, he shouted, "Tyrol! Get in here!"

xxxxx

Standing in the hatchway, Sharon feels frozen in place as she watches Helo, who remains at the top of the ramp, watching Kara, but then he returns to scanning the crowd and his eyes don't stop until he spots Sharon. After a brief hesitation, he jogs down the ramp and a moment later Sharon releases her grip on the hatchway and heads toward him, feeling lighter than she has in months, feeling almost happy.

The feeling is short-lived. Before she crosses half the distance toward Helo, Racetrack runs at him from the side and tackles him in an enthusiastic hug. Helo's arm circles her waist and he whirls her around, both of them laughing. Sharon stops where she is, in the shadow of a scarred and pitted Viper, suddenly unable to make her legs obey her brain. Racetrack throws her arms around Helo's neck and kisses him on the cheek. He leans into the kiss, but then she lets him go and turns to a man in a flight suit, hugs him as well, and Sharon can breathe again.

Her eyes meet Helo's and she starts toward him, but the woman he'd been with in the Cylon camp approaches him and touches his sleeve. Helo looks apologetically toward Sharon and turns his attention to the woman – Maya? – who says something to him. Helo smiles and then Maya throws herself into his arms, hugging him tightly. He rests his cheek against her hair, returning the embrace. His lips move and Sharon can't tell if he's saying something to her or kissing her hair. A wave of jealousy hits Sharon like a slap in the face and she fades back into the crowd.

Angry with herself because of the jealousy, she turns away. She reminds herself that she let Helo go months ago, pushed him away for his own good as well as for her peace of mind. She has no right to be jealous if he's formed an attachment to another woman since then.

Sharon doesn't know where she's going when she leaves the hangar through the makeshift infirmary. All she knows is that she can't stay.

xxxxx

"Maya, you can't. Do you even know how to fire a gun?"

Sharon stopped dead, just inside the gates of the compound, as chaos swirled around her, never close enough to touch. That voice, she'd know it anywhere.

"It's such close quarters, I don't have to, Karl." Sharon didn't recognize the woman's voice. "I want to help you."

Sharon tried to find Helo in the turmoil that was, up until a few moments ago, a Cylon internment camp, but there was an explosion outside the double row of fencing, followed by another just inside and just that quickly, she lost the sound of Helo and the woman in the cacophony.

A hail of bullets ripped into the dirt less than a meter in front of her, coming toward her, but then they stopped short. Sharon whirled around, raised her gun and fired an explosive round into the head of the Centurion that had stopped firing on her because its programming had told it to. Her shot took it in its red sensor eye and it dropped like a stone.

People were everywhere, running, screaming. Bullets rained down with ash and shrapnel from the explosions. Sharon fired on another Centurion, guns literally blazing as it bore down on one of Sam's resistance fighters; her first shot missed, her second tore it in half at the midsection. She didn't have a chance to move from her exposed position, no chance to take cover, but somehow neither bullets nor shrapnel found her. Through the haze of smoke, she kept firing. She didn't keep track of how many Centurions she took down, none of them capable of defending against her; she'd worry about the guilt of that later.

Finally it was over. Although the shouts and screams remained, the firing stopped. One of the canvas-covered transports in which Anders' people had arrived, Sharon among them, came to a stop in front of her and a red-haired woman leaned out the driver-side window – Barolay.

"Sharon!" Jean shouted, her voice urgent. "Get in!"

Sharon ran across the front of the truck, grabbed hold of the handle, but it stuck. A glance told her the door was never going to open, not easily or quickly, anyway, and so she holstered her gun, grabbed the inside of the frame and pulled herself head-first into the cab. She scraped her knees on the frame as she slid in and twisted.

Jean cocked her head and raised a brow, but said nothing. As soon as Sharon was in, she slammed the truck into gear and took off across the compound.

"What's the rush?" Sharon asked, bracing an arm against the dash.

"Sam got word Kara's alive and somewhere in New Cap City. Said he needs you to find her. Something to do with a tracking device and you having the receiver?"

"What?" Yes, Sharon had a transponder programmed to pick up the signals of the chips the recon team had been implanted with, but so did the rest of the team. "What the frak does _that_ mean?"

Jean shrugged and turned an impassive face back to the path before them, concentrating on avoiding obstacles. Sharon wasn't going to get any information out of Jean Barolay, whether there was information to be had or not. _I'd hate to face her at a Triad table_, she thought as she focused on the building they fast approached.

There, beside another transport, stood Anders and with him was Helo; no jacket, just a black t-shirt and jeans, and he had never looked so good to her as he did now. As fast as Jean was driving, it wasn't fast enough. Sharon's fingers tightened on the dash and she willed the woman to go faster.

Moments later, the truck jerked to a stop and Barolay jumped out. The driver side door hung open and, rather than fighting with the bent passenger door, Sharon scrambled across the seat. She jumped to the dirt and ran toward Helo and Sam, reaching them at the same time as a pretty, dark-haired woman she didn't recognize.

The woman touched Helo's wrist and said, "Karl, they're ready." It was the same woman she'd heard him with earlier and she wondered if they'd known each other before, back on _Galactica_.

His hand covered hers briefly. "Be there in a minute, Maya," he said and then turned to Sharon as the other woman moved away. It seemed to Sharon that she was reluctant to go.

"Gods, Sharon, am I glad to see you." Although he smiled, there was a shadow in his eyes when he looked at her, a wariness as to how she would receive him. Sharon gave him a reassuring smile and took a step toward him. But he turned away, moved to follow Maya. "Come on. There's not much time. I'll fill you in on the way."

She looked at Sam who gestured for her to go after Helo, then turned to shout over his shoulder, "Jean! You're in charge. I'm with Helo and Sharon." Barolay lifted her rifle in acknowledgement and Sam ran after Helo. When Sam realized that Sharon hadn't yet moved, he turned, jogging backwards, and shouted, "Sharon! Come _on_!"

xxxxx

Standing at the top of the ramp, Helo watches Kara run to Anders, lying still and pale near Raptor Three. He hadn't been doing well when they'd lifted off New Caprica and he looks worse now, but as Helo watches, Anders turns his head at Kara's approach. Reassured that he isn't dead yet, Helo returns his attention to the celebrating crowd.

Across the hangar, a movement catches his eye – a flash of bright yellow as a man pushes past a woman in brown, standing in a hatchway. Sharon. He grins and starts down the ramp at a jog, wanting nothing more than to hold her and reassure himself that she too is alive. The urge is irrational, as he can see quite clearly that she's alive, but something in him won't be satisfied until he feels her in his arms, solid and warm.

After only a short distance, he's nearly knocked from his feet. The impact and Racetrack's shouted, "Helo!" coincide with the nearby pop of a cork from a bottle. Reflexively, his arm circles Racetrack's waist and he twirls her around laughing, until he comes to a stop. She follows through on her own momentum, wrapping her arms around his neck, the rough-soft corduroy of her jacket catching for a moment at the stubble along his jaw. "We made it!" she laughs and kisses him on the cheek.

"We did," he answers with a squeeze to her waist, but then she pulls away from him to greet Hammerhead as enthusiastically as she had him.

Still grinning like a fool, Helo spots Sharon standing beside the nose of a Viper, one of the old Mark IIs. She isn't much closer than she was before Racetrack grabbed him and it crosses his mind to shout to her – it's just possible that he can make himself heard over the commotion – when he feels a light touch on his arm. His shoulders sag a bit at this new delay and disappointment dampens his greeting. "Maya."

"Karl, I just wanted to thank you. For everything. We would have died without you."

"Well, I couldn't exactly leave you behind," he says with a lop-sided smile.

She takes her hand from his arm only to reach up and pull him into a hug. "I didn't have the chance to say anything before, on the Raptor, but I'm so happy you're alive," she whispers. "When they took you away, I thought I'd never see you again."

"I had my doubts…"

Her arms tighten. "Gods… Karl, what are we going to do? We have to find her."

xxxxx

When they came for Helo this time, rather than take him to the building outside the compound, as they had done for the past six days, the Centurions took him into the town, to what had once been _Colonial One_. They ushered into the main office and left him, alone and handcuffed and wondering why he was there.

After only a couple of minutes, not long enough to really cause distress, a model Eight walked in from a room beyond the huge desk, behind which hung a large portrait of President Gaius Baltar.

"They told me you were alive, that you were here, but I had to see you for myself…" she said, rounding the desk to come closer to him. She looked at him with a bit of wonder and a lot of pleasure. She reached up to touch his face, but he shied away. Her smile faded and she dropped her hand.

"Boomer?" he asked.

She relaxed a little at the sign of recognition and smiled at him. "Oh, Helo. I should never have left you on Caprica."

He said nothing – he didn't know what to say to that. If she hadn't left him behind, so many things would have been different, but not necessarily better. He couldn't bring himself to engage in meaningless reminiscence. Gesturing around the room with his cuffed hands, he asked, "Why am I here?"

She sighed and dropped down into one of the chairs in front of the desk, and he remembered seeing that same flop so many times in the rec room or on a leave rotation. He didn't want to feel anything for her, and tried to remind himself that she wasn't Boomer, wasn't his friend, that she was the enemy.

"Can't I just want to say hi to a friend?" she finally asked.

With a pointed look at the metal cuffs around his wrists, he replied simply, "No."

She looked startled, as if she hadn't realized that he was there under duress and muttered, "Frak!" under her breath. She popped up from the chair and headed for the door through which he had come a few minutes earlier. "Hey! You, there!"

A few seconds later, a man walked through the door. "Ma'am?"

"Take those off him and leave."

"Yes, ma'am." The man, one of the Cylons' human police force, headed toward him and Helo held out his wrists. As the guy unlocked the cuffs, their eyes met and he realized it was Gage, one of the Sunshine Boys. Gage smirked at him and Helo resisted the urge to smash his fist into the bastard's face.

But he couldn't resist taunting him. "You heard her, Sunshine. You're dismissed."

Gage shot him a nasty look and opened his mouth to reply, but Boomer cut him off before he could even start. "Shut the door on your way out." With a last look at Helo, Gage turned, saluted her, and then left, pulling the door closed behind him.

"Friend of yours?" she asked.

He laughed, sharp and humorless. "We've met," he acknowledged. "Doesn't surprise me to learn he's a collaborator."

"He's a jackass." She grinned at him, the old Boomer grin that had made him want her from the very first. "Please sit?"

"You still haven't told me why you've brought me here."

"But I _did_ tell you." Realizing that he wasn't going to fall into their old camaraderie, her face became unreadable. "I had to see for myself that you're alive. The last time I saw you," she turned away from him and rounded the desk, trailing the fingers of one hand over the surface, "I thought that if that mob didn't tear you apart, you'd be dead within a week from radiation." She sat behind the desk, looked up at him.

"So did I, but I guess your… family had other plans."

She looked away at that – "Yeah, I guess they did…" – back at him. "Dammit, Helo, will you please just sit down? You're looming." That startled a bark of genuine laughter from him. Reluctantly, he sat. "I'm told the baby died," she continued.

"More than a year ago, yes." In a way, it bothered him that she knew about the baby, even though it made perfect sense that she would know.

"Did you love her?" The question was blurted out and she didn't look at him as she asked it, as though she had to know the answer, but didn't feel she had the right to ask. He knew she wasn't referring to Hera.

"Boomer, that's none of—"

"—my frakking business. I know that, Helo, but you're… you _were_ my friend. And she…"

"Was you?" He shook his head. "Don't go there, Boomer."

There was an awkward silence while she watched him, slumped in his chair, and he avoided looking at her at all.

But eventually he did look at her again and caught a wistful expression that quickly vanished. He pushed up from the chair. "Well, this has been fun, but I think I'd like to go back to the compound now."

"I stopped them hunting you."

"What?"

"I stopped the slaughter." He looked at her then, really looked at her, saw the uncertainty in her and the determination to not lose control. "I— _We_ made them think about what they were doing to you. Made them understand that we're all God's children, Cylons and humans alike." There was a pleading tone in her voice, an almost desperate desire to make him understand.

He wanted none of it, not after what he'd been through these past days, not after what the others in the camp – and dozens more just like it – had been through for the past few months. "So, this is better? Kept like animals in a zoo? Bred like livestock? Thanks. I didn't realize."

She winced as though he had hit her. "It wasn't supposed to be like this," she whispered, closing her eyes tightly for a moment before looking up at him again. "Helo, the others, number Three and her followers, they're planning on taking the children to the Cylon homeworld."

"The children." His heart nearly stopped.

"Yes, all of the human children under ten years old." She looked sick. "They want to raise them as Cylons. They won't physically _be_ Cylons, of course, but they'll—"

"They'll be raised to think and act like Cylons. Why are you telling me this?" _Gods, the children… Hera…_

xxxxx

Helo rests his cheek on Maya's hair. She smells like wood smoke and homemade soap, a combination he'll always associate with her. "We'll find her, Maya. We'll bring Hera home."

She squeezes him hard and then pulls back a little to look up at him. "Isis," she says firmly, continuing an old argument – if an argument that has only existed for a week can be considered old. "Isis."

Laughing, deliberately not thinking about how the future might affect the two of them and Sharon and the little girl whose very existence binds them together, Helo shakes his head. "We'll worry about that later, okay?"

Maya nods, squeezes him one more time, and then lets him go. "Yeah. We have to find her first." Stepping back, she pushes her hair behind her ears and says, "I won't keep you. I just wanted to… Well, I know you're busy…" she begins to back away, suddenly awkward. "I'll just go now."

"As soon as I hear anything, Maya, I'll let you know." _Frak. How am I going to explain this to Sharon?_

"I know you will, Karl." She smiles at him and then disappears into the crowd.

Impatient to finally hook up with Sharon, to tell her about Hera, Helo turns back to where he last saw her, but she's gone. _Dammit._ Frowning, he searches the swirling crowd yet again for some sign of her, but he stops almost immediately on Kara and Anders. As he watches, Kara lays a hand on Anders' chest, her other hand holds one of his against her cheek.

Even from Helo's vantage a good twenty meters distant, Anders' skin looks gray. Kara strokes his face, but then leans over him, brings her ear into contact with his chest. She straightens and frantically shouts something Helo can't make out over the din and he changes course, weaves his way toward Kara, his need to talk to Sharon pushed momentarily into the background. He had seen Sam Anders take two bullets at point-blank range. Helo doesn't know where Doc Cottle is, but he thought he saw Ishay near one of the hatches…

xxxxx

"Get down!" Helo shouted and pushed Roslin to the ground, covering her body with his as a spray of bullets cut through the space they'd just occupied. The mud was cold and wet on his forearms, not a particularly pleasant sensation.

One of Sam's men lobbed a grenade at the toaster, stopping the barrage of gunfire, if only for a handful of seconds – long enough for Helo to roll to his knees and aim. The former president of the Colonies wisely stayed down as he fired over her head; his shot took another Centurion in the shoulder and sent it spinning.

Overhead a Raptor screamed past, headed toward the pyramid courts, a Cylon Raider on its tail, but before the Raider could do its job, it exploded in a ball of flame, blown apart by a Colonial Viper. Fragments rained down on the heads of the refugees below. As Helo watched, the Raptor landed in the middle of the nearby pyramid court. He pushed to his feet and offered Roslin a hand up.

Scanning for Sharon, he pulled Roslin to her feet and said, pointing toward the pyramid court, "Head for that Raptor." She nodded, turned, and ran, bent low to the ground.

"Karl!" Maya ran toward him, dodging past a man in a New Caprica police uniform as another Raptor flew in over their heads. "Laura!"

Roslin stopped at the sound of her name and Helo turned from her to Maya. "Maya, go with her to the Raptors." Roslin held out a hand toward her, beckoning her on when she looked as though she'd protest, for which Helo was grateful.

Another hail of bullets sent a spray of dirt and mud up in front of him and he dove for cover behind an overturned truck. Looking back toward the detention center, he saw a flash of blonde hair and green shirt duck behind what looked like a storage shed. A third Raptor appeared above. As Helo watched, it flew in toward the others and made a graceless landing atop one of the pyramid goals.

"Frak," he muttered, then shouted, "Starbuck!"

"Yo!" She sprinted from behind the shed toward him, skidded to a stop beside him, grinning.

He nodded toward the Raptors. "One of our birds just came in on autopilot." Her only response was a raised brow, but that look spoke volumes. "We knew we'd need the ships so we programmed 'em to land at predetermined coordinates." He snuck a look around the front of the truck, saw that all three Raptors had their hatches open and ramps deployed.

"Have you seen Sharon?" he asked, turning back to Starbuck.

"Yeah. She was right behind me."

"Alright. Find her, get to the Raptors. I need you to fly the one that just crushed the pyramid goal."

She blinked once and then laughed. "You been XO so long you forgot how to fly?"

"Bite me, Thrace."

"Later, Raptor Boy." And with that she was gone, headed back toward the detention center to make sure Sharon got out and got to her bird.

Helo searched the chaos, looking for Anders, when he spotted a model Eight who wore the same brown jacket and tan trousers Boomer had worn. He stood. "Boomer!" he shouted.

She turned toward the sound of his voice and he ran to her.

"The children…?" he began, but she shook her head.

"Already gone. As soon as we picked up a battlestar in the system, the baseship they were on jumped."

Helo just stared at her. _Gods._ The children were gone, headed toward the Cylon homeworld, his daughter with them.

"Helo." She took his hand and it was all he could do to not pull violently away. She pressed something into his palm and closed his fingers over it. "Take this. It'll lead you to them." And then she stepped back from him, let his hand drop from hers. "I have to go."

"Go? You're not coming with us?"

"I don't belong there anymore."

Before he could respond to that, a building nearby exploded as a Viper streaked overhead, the medium of its destruction. Helo heard Anders shouting for people to move, move, move as he herded them toward transport vehicles, waiting to take them to the ships, in turn waiting for their loads of refugees to take off from the planet's surface.

Boomer touched Helo's face briefly and said, "Goodbye, Helo." And then she was running across the square, away from him, away from the Raptors, away from the life she'd known before.

He watched until she disappeared past a building and then headed to help Anders, but as he ran toward his friend, a squad of Centurions came into view. "Anders!" Helo shouted, but it was too late. The Centurions opened fire and he saw Anders fall even as Connor and another man opened up on them.

Helo ran, firing as he went.

xxxxx

There, fastening a bandage around a man's midsection only a handful of meters away, Helo sees the medic. Cupping his hands around his mouth to better direct the sound, he shouts, "Ishay!" and rushes toward her. Both she and the man she's tending turn toward him.

"Ishay, when you're finished here, I need you to come with me." He points in the direction of Raptor Three, although there's no way she could possibly see Anders from here.

"I'm nearly done, Captain," Ishay says, tucking in the ends of a bandage. Grabbing up her medical kit from the deck, she nods at the man and turns to Helo. "Let's go."

As he elbows his way through to Sam and Kara, Ishay follows closely behind. "Sorry," and "excuse us" become a sort of mantra along the way. When the press of bodies briefly becomes too dense to continue, Ishay asks, her voice behind him and to the right, "What kind of injury are we looking at, Captain?"

"Unless something else happened that I don't know about, he took a couple of bullets to the gut." The constant motion of the crowd opens a clear path before them. Helo grabs Ishay's hand and all but sprints the final few meters, pulling her along in his wake. "It looked pretty bad."

"Gunshots to the midsection are _always_ bad." Her voice seems to bounce as she runs.

Another swirling eddy of humanity comes between them and their destination. "Let us through!" Helo shouts as he forces an opening for Ishay.

Kara, holding a blood-soaked pad against Anders' stomach and looking more defeated than Helo's ever seen her, lifts her head. "Karl!" she shouts. Recognizing Ishay as well, her expression clears, lightens. "Ishay, thank the Gods."

All business, Ishay sets right to work. No attention to spare for anyone but the injured man, she sets down her kit and searches through it. Straightening, whatever piece of equipment she was looking for apparently found, she glances first at Helo and then Kara. "I need room to work."

With a nod, Helo reaches for Kara's hand, slick with Sam's blood, and pulls her with him, closer to the Raptor's still-deployed ramp. Her eyes never leave her husband.

"Gods," she whispers and then, stronger, "He's going to die, isn't he?"

Helo simply says, "Yeah."

That gets her attention and she throws a sharp look at him. "You're supposed to lie and tell me everything's going to be okay." She pulls her hand from his and crosses her arms over her chest as if suddenly cold. She looks back over at Anders, her feelings plain to see, if only for a heartbeat.

"We all die, Kara. I don't think Anders is gonna die today, though."

Another sharp look and then her eyes narrow and she visibly relaxes. "Mother frakker," she accuses with a jab to his arm. She runs her less bloodied hand over her face impatiently, wiping at both tears and stray strands of hair, but looking a little less lost.

"That's better. Seriously, Kara, he's lost a lot of blood, but Ishay's maybe better than Cottle for something like this."

"I hope so. This is the first time I've seen him in four frakking _months_; I don't want to lose him forever the same day." There is a faraway look in her eyes as she stares toward Anders and Ishay, but clearly she doesn't see them. "The sonofabitch just wouldn't stay dead," she whispers. Kara blinks twice and then slants a look at Helo, rubs at her arm. "Thanks for finding me, Karl."

Slinging an arm around her shoulder, Helo pulls her in close and kisses the top of her head. "Just returning the favor." He leans back against the Raptor, pulling her with him, and they stay there in silence watching Ishay work.

xxxxx

His head spinning and his equilibrium shot to hell, Helo couldn't offer much resistance as two Centurions dragged him down a long corridor to a gray metal door, streaked with grime. While one of them held Helo's arms, the other unlocked and opened the door. They shoved Helo through it; he jumped at the opening as they pulled the heavy door closed, but he couldn't move fast enough and it shut with a note of finality.

Cheek to the single small window, he pounded a fist against the door in frustration and shouted, "I'm not a member of—" He winced at the pain in both his head and his hand. "—the resistance." Turning, he leaned his back against the door and looked around the dimly lit room.

The walls were concrete and there was a small gap, no more than a centimeter, beneath. A single light fixture hung above a table from the center of the ceiling; the fixture was high enough that it would be impractical to attempt to use it for either escape or suicide. Not that Helo was up for either of those things, just then.

"No." The voice was muffled, but female. "You're not a member of the resistance." She lifted her head. "You're a member of the opposition."

He pushed away from the door, took a step further in, not taking his eyes from the mass of blonde hair and blue cloth in the corner. "_Kara_?"

A grin and a snort of laughter. "As far as I know."

_Thank the Gods Tigh was wrong._ Just like that, Helo felt as though they might actually have a chance to pull this off. If Kara was still alive… "You just can't keep yourself out of hack, can you?"

She shrugged. "Girl's gotta have _someplace_ to call home."

Moving slowly because of the pounding in his head, Helo shuffled to Kara's side and slid down the wall beside her. Now that he was closer, he could see the purple shadows under her eyes and the haunted look in them.

"What the frak are you doing here, Karl?" she asked.

"I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. You?"

Silence. Then Kara leaned her head on his shoulder. He waited for her to say something, but was met only with more silence and he thought that she might have fallen asleep. He let his eyes wander about the cell, noting the lack of hinges on this side of the door, the wire mesh inside the window. It only added to the surreal feeling he'd lived with since he'd been captured by the Cylons and subsequently met up with Colonel Tigh and half a dozen other resistance members in a canvas-covered truck.

But then, her voice low enough that he wouldn't have been able to hear her if her mouth wasn't so close to his ear, Kara said, "The bastards mess with your head, Karl. They mix lies and truth until you don't know which way is up anymore." She reached for his hand, twined her fingers with his. "Don't let them. Don't let 'em get to you. Hang on to what's important. Stay focused." She seemed to speak as much to herself as to him.

He squeezed her hand. "I haven't given up yet, Thrace." He shifted to settle her more comfortably on his shoulder, leaned his head on hers. He closed his eyes and wished the room would stop spinning.

Time passed and they simply sat. Helo wanted to ask her why she was wearing a terry cloth robe, why her feet were bare, but while those things might be important to him, they weren't important to his mission, so instead he asked, "How many people in the resistance?" They needed to know back on _Galactica_ what kind of ground support they could expect.

She rolled her head back and forth on his shoulder. "I can't answer that."

_Idiot. Of course she can't say anything. The cell could be bugged or I could be a double agent…_ "Yeah, I understand," he told her. "Guess I shouldn't have asked."

"No, Karl, you don't understand. I really _can't_ tell you." She shifted so that she could look at him. "I was taken not long after the toasters came back. However long it's been, this is the closest I ever got to escape, and you see how successful _that_ was. No one even knows I'm alive."

He squeezed her hand again. "Until now."

"What? Big damn hero to the rescue?" She leaned back against him again and pulled his arm around her.

"Well, it _is_ my turn…" he laughed.

"You're full of shit, Agathon."

Ignoring that, he observed, "So if no one knows you're alive, the toasters must have kept you pretty well hidden."

"Yeah. You're the first human being I've seen in… I don't even know." Her voice trailed off. Restlessly, she picked at the sleeve of his shirt before she spoke again. "One day, he tells me I've been here for a couple of weeks, the next it's a couple of years." She sounded lost.

Helo buried his face in Kara's hair and tightened his arms around her. "I can tell you that it's been one hundred thirty-two days since the toasters came," he said, offering what little comfort he could. "He?" he prompted, knowing that she needed to get this out.

But she didn't answer his question. Instead she asked, "Have you seen Sam?"

"No, I just got here." He leaned his head back against the slightly damp concrete. With a bitter laugh, he said, "First thing I did after seeing the others on their way was get my sorry ass caught." He raised a hand to his aching head. "I think I might have a concussion."

"You're nothing but a frakkin' Cylon magnet, you know that?"

"Piss off," he groused, smiling even as he said it. "Colonel Tigh told me Sam's alive, though, along with Tyrol and Roslin."

"Good." She squeezed his hand hard. "That's good."

Like flipping a switch, her voice was stronger when she continued. "You haven't told me why you're here. Frak that. You haven't told me _how_ you're here."

"When the fleet bugged out, we didn't go too far."

"You really are here for a rescue, then. The Old Man has a plan, I take it?" It worried him that she merely sounded curious, like it wouldn't affect her.

"Yeah. We're gonna get you guys off this rock."

She laughed, humorless, the sound like broken glass. "Not me. No one knows where to find me. Even if the toasters don't kill you, Karl, you won't know where to find me, once he comes for me." He stared down at her for a moment, thinking.

"Maybe you don't know as much as you think you do, Thrace." He leaned forward, pulled his arms away from her and unbuckled his belt. It would hurt like frakking hell, but there was nothing else to use – the toasters had taken just about everything from him before they'd thrown him in here.

When he pulled the belt from his waist, he caught Kara watching him, a smirk on her face, a much more comforting sight than that lost look whenever she spoke of the Cylon who'd been holding her prisoner. "What?" he asked, pausing with the belt held loosely in one hand.

"The table might be a _little_ more comfortable than the floor…"

Shaking his head, he continued with what he'd been doing and applied the tang of the buckle to the concrete floor. He'd never be able to truly sharpen it, but he could at least remove some of the roundness, giving it a better chance of puncturing skin. Kara watched him in bemused silence as he turned the belt over and scraped the other side of the tang against the floor.

"What are you doing?" She sounded almost interested.

Helo flashed her a grin and, satisfied that the tang was as sharp as it was going to get, he shoved his right sleeve up his arm, left it bunched over his shoulder. With one finger he pressed against the muscles until he found a small lump, then pressed the tang of the belt buckle just below it.

"Karl?"

He sucked his lower lip between his teeth and jabbed hard into his arm. The tang sank into flesh and then broke through into the muscle beneath. The pain didn't hit until the blood began to flow, but it wasn't too bad. He let go of his lip.

"Karl, what the frak?" Kara moved away from the wall, scrambling the short distance to him on all fours as he squeezed, pushing the lump from its resting place in his arm, down to the jagged tear he'd just made in his skin.

Finally he looked at her. "Transmitter. Kind of a locator beacon." He dropped his eyes back to the wound in his arm as he squeezed the bit of electronics out through the tear. It was small enough, light enough that it stuck to the blood on his arm. He raised his eyes to Kara again. "I don't suppose you've got any water in here?" She shook her head, looking at him like he was insane. He sighed, wondering how he was going to clean the blood off – it'd be just perfect if he shoved the damn thing into Kara's arm only to have her die of a blood infection.

xxxxx

The buzz of the celebration continues unabated around them and Helo closes his eyes, Kara warm against his side. He doesn't remember her sliding an arm around his waist, but she must have, because after a time she squeezes him and asks, "Where's Sharon?"

"Don't know. I keep losing her in the damn crowd." He opens his eyes, scans the hangar. He doesn't find Sharon, but he does see Admiral Adama, ex-President Roslin at his side, talking to Tyrol in the middle of the bay.

"Captain Thrace," Ishay calls just as Adama looks over to Helo and Kara and motions for them to join him.

Helo pushes away from the Raptor. "Go. I'll talk to the Old Man." But Kara is already pulling away from him and Helo isn't sure if she even cares that Adama wants them both.

When he reaches the Admiral, Tyrol is gone and Adama is instructing a deck officer to take Roslin to Adama's own quarters. He raises a finger to indicate that he'll be with Helo in just a moment and so he waits, studying Laura Roslin.

The impact with the muddy ground hadn't done good things for her tunic or trousers, although most of the muck is gone from her face. He'd thought for half a second of letting her take that bullet; seeing her now, knowing that his daughter is still alive and in Cylon hands, a part of him wishes that he had.

xxxxx

"I don't understand why they're treating you like this."

Helo flinched as Maya dabbed at a new cut above his left eye, wiping away blood with an alcohol-soaked cloth. The swelling had gone down over the past couple of days so that he could see again, but it still hurt like hell.

He tried to sit up, but Maya pushed him back down. "Stop that. You're not going anywhere right now." Her voice was stern, her expression worried.

"I have to talk to Kat." Even as he said it, he relaxed against the thin mattress and closed his eyes. It had been three days since he'd been captured. Only four days left until _Galactica_ and _Pegasus_ returned to the system. Every member of the original team knew what to do, and no one team member was indispensable, but…

Cloth rustled and wood creaked as Maya shifted on her stool and Helo opened his eyes again. "Stop looking at me like that," he told her. They all looked at him like he was going to break. Kat and Hotdog had taken to hovering near him whenever the Centurions appeared, as though they could prevent the chrome jobs from taking him back to their masters.

"I'm worried about you, Karl."

"Don't. They won't kill me." He wasn't entirely sure of that, though. So far, they wanted his "willing" participation, but they could just as easily decide that drugging him was too much trouble and that a more scientific approach to another human-Cylon hybrid would be just as pleasing to their god.

"Why do you keep fighting them?" She dropped the cloth into a dish on the floor, apparently satisfied now that the bleeding had stopped. "You have to know you can't win."

"It's not about winning." Forcing himself past the discomfort, he pushed himself upright, swung his feet to the floor, only then noticing that someone had removed his boots. "It's about not giving up." He thought of Kara as he'd last seen her, frightened and alone, but still fighting. He thought of Sharon and all she'd been through; if he and Sharon both made it off this planet alive… "It's about staying focused on what's important." Helo looked at Maya. "This," he waved a hand at the barracks they were in, "this isn't important. What's outside that barbed wire is what we need to focus on."

Her eyes darted about the room, which was empty save for the two of them, and then she leaned in close to him, a lock of dark hair falling over her eyes. "I know you and the others have been talking about escape," she whispered, tucking her hair behind her ear again. "I'll do anything I can to help you. My daughter is outside that barbed wire."

Helo glanced at the cameras mounted near the rafters in the corners of the room, red lights glowing dispassionately. Every move was under visual surveillance, but the listening devices were more easily dealt with; there was so much dust in the New Caprican air that, with a little help from the residents, the Cylons' "ears" weren't much use. Even so…

Helo seized on the opportunity to change the subject to something less dangerous. "What's her name?"

Maya smiled, her expression for just that moment untainted with worry. "Isis. Oh, she's so beautiful and I miss her so much."

Helo nodded, remembering his first glimpse of Hera. She'd been so very small, wrinkled and red but so perfect. "Tell me about her, your Isis." She looked at him sharply and he realized he hadn't quite been able to keep the wistfulness from his tone. "I had a daughter. She… died."

Maya waited a moment for him to elaborate, but when he didn't continue, she said, "Isis is so smart. She's only a year and a half old, but she watches everything, just soaks every little thing in. She's so curious." Her face lit up when she spoke of Isis and Helo felt sharp regret that he'd never had the chance to experience the wonder that Maya clearly felt for her little girl.

"Where is she now?" The way she spoke, Isis was clearly somewhere that Maya felt was safe.

"With friends. I don't really know where." She sat back on the stool and stretched her legs out in front of her. "We were trying to escape the city the day I was taken, but we didn't move fast enough." Eyes closed, her mind was far away, reliving those events. "Somebody had to stay behind so the others could get away. Tory volunteered so that I could stay with Isis, but it didn't work out that way." She shifted again, leaning forward. "Isis is safe, though. I'm sure of that."

She fell silent again and Helo allowed her that silence. Rather than pushing her for more, he watched the sunlight drift slowly across the floor, having forced its way past the dust that coated the windows. There were still a few hours yet before the Cylons would return for him, if they followed their established pattern. He really should find Hotdog and Kat; there were plans to make.

"Karl?" He shifted his attention back to Maya. "Your daughter. Did she die back home, in the Colonies?"

"No. She died not long before the election." Something in her face made him continue. "Her lungs weren't fully developed. She only lived a few hours, less than a day."

Her eyes narrowed and she frowned, staring at him intently, as though she searched for something. "You and your wife must have been devastated."

Dropping his eyes to his hands, he said, "We're not married. There were… complications." He looked at her again. "Religious differences." _Gods, what an understatement._

She nodded, still studying his face. "You're the one who had a child with a Cylon, aren't you?" she finally said.

_Frak. Does _everyone_ know?_ "Yep, that'd be me." Although she said nothing more, he found neither hostility nor disapproval in her expression or her attitude and he was surprised to find that he wanted to talk to her about it. "Sharon's pregnancy didn't go smoothly. Hera was born too early. It seemed like one minute, she was fine and the next, she was gone. Doc Cottle said there was nothing he could do."

"Doctor Cottle?"

"Yeah, the _Galactica_'s medical officer."

Sharon had never believed what Cottle had told them. For that matter, Helo didn't quite believe it himself. It was more likely that the doc hadn't been _allowed_ to do anything.

"She has your eyes."

Maya's quiet voice interrupted his thoughts and suddenly, Helo couldn't breathe. Eyes wide, he stared at her. "What did you say?"

xxxxx

Helo fights back the sudden wave of anger that threatens to overwhelm him as he watches the former president.

"Thank you, Bill," Roslin says to Admiral Adama. "Your thoughtfulness is appreciated." She smiles, the expression warm but tired, and turns toward Helo. "Captain, I want to thank you again for all you've done."

Helo can't bring himself to return her smile, but he does manage a nod. She turns to follow the lieutenant. "Ms. Roslin," he calls after her. His hands are clenched so tightly into fists that his knuckles ache.

With a soft touch on her escort's arm to gain his attention, she turns back to Helo. "Yes, Captain?"

"We need to talk." He knows that some of his anger must be clear on his face, but he doesn't care. "About my daughter."

She looks taken aback, but quickly recovers. Adama's attention vacillates back and forth between the two of them. "Yes, Captain Agathon. We _should_ talk." And then she turns and walks away, her escort following a moment later. She doesn't look back.

xxxxx

Sharon wanders the corridors of _Galactica_ aimlessly, lost inside herself, and wonders how she came to be here. A lifetime ago, it seems, she willingly placed herself in the hands of the enemy based solely on feelings for a man from whom she's been separated for months and who, as far as she can tell – as far as she fears – has moved on. At _her_ urging.

As she walks, she absently notes the changes in _Galactica_ from the days when she was a newly commissioned officer. She doesn't try to remind herself that she isn't the one who lived it; she experienced all of those things in every way that counts. The battlestar had been old, even then, a veteran, but she had always been well taken care of. Now…

Drifts of dust gather in the seams between the decking and bulkheads, causing odd little shadows as the lights flicker, not quite ready to give up on life. The air is musty and there is an oily, tacky film that coats the flat surfaces along the bulkheads, a sad tale of air scrubbers not functioning properly and no one left to care.

She passes a few people, some in orange or yellow coveralls, and others in green or blue uniforms, but not many as most are involved in the celebration she still hears in the distance. No one she passes speaks to her, although one or two nod or smile in greeting and she thinks they must somehow not realize who and what she is.

No one challenges her right to be there and as she wanders, still no destination in mind, Sharon passes into the corridor that leads to Admiral Adama's quarters. The lights here are in no better shape than anywhere else, flickering sporadically, but there seems to be less dust and oil and the air a bit fresher. She hesitates for a moment as she passes the closed hatch to his quarters. It's unlikely that he's there and she doesn't want to talk to anyone, in any case.

She continues past to the next junction, her only intention to escape the now-distant celebration and her memories, which are far too close at hand.

Still caught up in those memories, Sharon slams into someone as she rounds a corner; she has an impression of a solid wall of blue fabric before she stumbles back, stops herself from falling by grabbing at the closest bulkhead.

"I'm so sorry," she says to the man, a lieutenant she remembers from CIC, although she doesn't recall his name. "I wasn't paying attention." She pushes away from her support and crouches down to help him gather up the things scattered on the deck.

"That's alright, Lieutenant Valerii. Not your fault." He stands and offers her a hand up, his grip firm.

_Desanti, that's his name._ "Thank you, Lieutenant Desanti." She offers him a quick smile and starts off in the direction she'd been heading when the woman with Desanti stops her.

"_Lieutenant_ Valerii."

Sharon turns to see Laura Roslin, her face streaked with what appears to be soot, her clothes dirty and torn, but somehow still wrapped in the authority of her former office. Roslin turns to Desanti and holds out her hands for the things he carries, which Sharon realizes are Fleet greens and a smallish bag that she thinks must contain toiletries.

"Thank you for your help, Lieutenant Desanti." Roslin smiles and takes the clothes and bag from him. "I can find my way to the Admiral's quarters from here." It's clearly a dismissal and Desanti straightens and salutes her, then turns on his heel and walks away.

The two women stare at each other, assessing. Sharon sees in Roslin a woman who may no longer be president of the Twelve Colonies, but who has lost none of her confidence or her air of command. She doesn't know what Roslin sees, but it's never been a secret that she neither trusts Sharon nor has she ever seen any value in allowing her to remain alive.

Roslin breaks the silence. Given their history and her earlier emphasis on Sharon's rank, her words are a surprise. "Thank you for your assistance on New Caprica, Lieutenant."

Not knowing quite how to deal with her, wary, Sharon falls back on military protocol. "I was just doing my job, ma'am."

"Yes, your job." She shifts, settles the bundle of clothing more securely under one arm. "I take it that you've been reinstated to your former position within the Fleet?"

Sharon nods. "Admiral Adama felt that it would be better for all involved if I were sworn in."

"Did he?"

The question could simply be curious, or it could be hostile. Suddenly, Sharon wants nothing more than to be alone, to not have to watch what she does, what she says, what she _thinks_ in the presence of these humans. They have surrounded her for days – not just one or two at a time, but dozens – and now she feels an odd nostalgia for her cell, the quiet and isolation to be found there.

"If you'll excuse me, Ms. Roslin?" Without waiting for a response, Sharon turns her back on the former president. She feels the weight of the woman's gaze between her shoulder blades for the length of the corridor.

xxxxx

Finally, all the well wishers and grateful refugees have moved on to other things. Kara makes a break for it to follow Anders and Ishay to the med bay, and Helo finds that he no longer has the stomach for celebrating. Only Admiral Adama notices when he leaves and the Admiral doesn't try to stop him.

He knows the path so well that he can walk it in his sleep.

Past the main brig, the lights leading to maximum security are dimmer, nearly half the bulbs dead, not worth replacing since there is no longer an occupant to keep watch over. And the brig is empty when he arrives, not even a token guard and he thinks everyone must be at the impromptu party.

The door to her old cell is open and Helo stops, rests both hands against the doorjamb, unsurprised to see that Sharon's there, cross-legged on the bed. She looks up and then back down, says nothing, but neither does she seem any more surprised at his presence than he is at hers.

It's been hours since they'd landed their birds in _Galactica_'s hangar, hours since he began to look for her, wanting – _needing_ – to talk to her. There are so many things he wants to say and he has no idea where to begin.

After a moment, he says, "Listen. That's all. Just listen." When she doesn't make any move to turn or leave, he takes a deep breath, holds it, marshalling his thoughts, and then releases it. "Sharon, I love you. Nothing that's been said or done, nothing that _hasn't_ been said or done, has changed that. I love you. You. Not the rook who flew with me before the war, although I know she's a part of you. And not the woman I thought you were, back on Caprica. You."

He holds himself very still and watches her as he speaks, but she doesn't look at him, just sits on the bed, stares at her hands, rubs at her fingers. He realizes that he has a death grip on the jamb and lets go, lets his arms drop to his sides as he takes one step and then another into the cell.

"I know you're a Cylon. It doesn't matter. I'm human. That doesn't matter either. I know that just about everyone, human _and_ Cylon, thinks we're freaks." Her expression doesn't change, but her hands cease their restless movement. He crouches down in front of her, so that his head is just below hers, so that if she shifts her eyes the tiniest fraction she'll have little choice but to meet his. "It. Doesn't. Matter. The only things that matter are you and me. What we think of each other, feel for each other."

Finally she looks at him, but still he can't read her expression. He looks down at the deck between his knees. "Sharon, there isn't a rule book for this." He looks up at her again, takes the risk and lightly brushes his knuckles against her cheek. "No one has ever been in this situation before. Just us. And if you can honestly tell me that it was all a lie, that you never felt anything for me, that you only used me for my DNA, then I'll go away. You'll never hear from me again." He pauses, searches her face for some kind of sign. "But if it wasn't a lie, if you did care for me, then give me another chance. Give us a chance."

He sees the tears gather before she blinks them quickly away. Almost as though the movement isn't under her control, she reaches out and traces her index finger along his lower lip. He closes his eyes, muscles almost rigid with the effort to not flinch at the touch – the first time his Sharon has touched him in more than a year. "It wasn't all a lie," she whispers. "Helo…" Her voice is stronger as she says his name, more sure, more like Sharon Valerii, like Boomer.

More like Cylon model number Eight.

"Helo." She cups his face in her hand and he slams back from her, scrabbles away as instinct forces reason into a dark corner of his brain. He doesn't stop until he feels the metal wall of the cell at his back, preventing him from retreating further. His heart is tight in his chest, his pulse pounding as the sound of his own heartbeat drowns out everything but her shocked cry. "Helo!"

"Don't!" In an effort to get some semblance of control back, he bashes his head into the wall. "Don't call me that." His voice is steadier, less panicked. He swallows hard, forces his muscles to relax. "Karl. My name is _Karl_." They'd never used that, only his call sign, only Helo. None of them had called him Karl.

xxxxx

A Centurion dragged Helo back to the compound and dropped him inside the gate. He couldn't stop shaking or feeling like he'd never be warm again. His left eye was swollen nearly shut; it throbbed, sending flares of white-hot pain deep into his skull. He didn't think it should hurt as much as it did. Nor should the sticky mud under his cheek feel so icy, or the whatever-it-was under his shoulder feel as though it were going to burst through his shirt to tear at the skin and muscle beneath.

It took everything he had to turn his head and open his one good eye. Bright white spotlights on tall towers drilled through the darkness straight into his head and he felt his stomach lurch. "Gods," he whispered. As he sat up, a shiver swept through him that was so strong, he nearly bit his tongue. "What the frak did they give me?"

Cradling his head in his hands, he tried to remember what had happened. Biers and her tin minions had taken him to a building just outside the compound, itself surrounded by barbed wire. He didn't remember what she'd said to him, something about things being more pleasant if he'd only cooperate, but he'd fought her, fought them. Biers had circled him and whispered into his ear with each circuit, and then Sharon was there; but of course, it wasn't Sharon. Nor was the one that followed her or the one after that.

He'd fought in earnest then, Kat's words still echoing in his head._ Frakkers may call it a farm…_ _Breeders' Canyon…_ He'd managed to free one arm, not that it had done him much good. That was probably when he'd received the latest blow, the one that left him half-blind now. All that followed was a jumble of sights and sounds and sensations piled one on top of the other.

Voices drifted to him from across the compound. Helo closed his eyes again and fought back the nausea, but it was worse with his eyes closed. _Sharon, Biers, another Sharon… the sting of a needle in his arm… cool air on bare skin, followed by warm hands… the taste of Sharon's mouth, but not hers, never hers…_ He lost the fight, spilled the meager contents of his stomach onto the muddy ground.

"Hush, it'll be okay." A woman's voice, soft, low.

Too-warm hands gripped his arms below the sleeves of his t-shirt, almost burning his skin as they supported him and helped him to his knees, then more or less to his feet. He couldn't keep his balance, swayed and nearly fell, but she kept him upright, a shoulder under his armpit and an arm around his waist.

"Let's get you inside." Inexplicably, he felt tears slide down his cheeks, hot when they leaked from his eyes, but cold when they reached his jaw and chin, the sensation surreal.

xxxxx

Sharon covers her mouth with her hand, as if she can physically hold back the sob that threatens to tear from her throat. For a split second, just a flash and then gone, there is a kind of loathing in his eyes as he looks at her. The tears spill down her cheeks unchecked. "Oh, God, He—" She stops herself from finishing the word. "Karl, what did they do to you?"

The unyielding control under which he has held himself since his initial panicked flight suddenly collapses. He leans back against the wall of what was once her cage, slants a look at her and laughs, the sound bitter. "Sharon, they had me for almost a week. They knew who I was, they knew about you and me, about Hera." The last of the panic drains from him, leaving him looking profoundly tired. His next words cut through her like knives. "What do you _think_ they did to me?"

_My name is Karl._

The yellow of old, faded bruises on his cheeks, his jaw…

_My name is Karl._

The edges of a dirty and bloody bandage around his arm, just below the short sleeve of his shirt – the same shirt he'd worn the day they'd left _Galactica_ for New Caprica, wearing civilian clothes in case of capture instead of uniforms and flight suits…

_My name is Karl._

The near-desperation in his eyes when she'd touched him, when she'd called him Helo, the name she'd always used for him, from the day they'd met – _a brief glimpse in her memory of his smiling face, open and friendly, as he'd held out his hand and said, "Call me Helo…"_

_My name is Karl._

The way he wouldn't look at her, wouldn't touch her or so much as sit near her when they'd gone from the camp where they'd found him to the detention center in New Caprica City…

"Oh, God."

xxxxx

The transport rattled along, Sam at the wheel. Beside him, Sharon monitored her hand-held transponder, guiding him toward wherever Kara was based on the strength of the signal it received. Rather than briefing her, Helo was in the back of the truck, showing Maya how to shoot a gun, leaving Sam to tell her that Helo had seen Kara and somehow given her his transmitter.

After more than an hour, the signal led them into New Caprica City. As they drew closer, they heard gunfire, faint at first but growing louder, interspersed with explosions both large and small. Driving at breakneck speed through the battle that raged between the human resistance and Cylon Centurions, Sam brought the truck to a jerky stop in front of a concrete building, one of the few with multiple stories.

Sam slammed from the truck, shouting orders, as his people jumped to the hard ground. "All right, people, let's go. I don't like to keep my wife waiting."

Transponder in one hand, side arm in the other, Sharon followed Sam. He stopped short of the main door, which hung ajar, and called, "Connor!" A man with lank brown hair came forward, clapped a hand on Sam's shoulder in passing, and pushed the door open the rest of the way. When nothing happened, he stepped further into the building.

A staccato burst of gunfire sounded shortly thereafter and then nothing for several seconds. Finally Connor shouted, "Clear!"

Stepping past the body of a Five, his glassy eyes staring at the ceiling, Sharon followed the signal past what appeared to be administrative offices. The only other Cylon they saw was another Five, sprawled dead across a desk.

When the group reached a heavy metal door, locked, Sharon looked at Connor. "I don't suppose you found the key?"

Connor shook his head and Sam shot her a wolfish grin, swinging the pack from his shoulder. "Universal key." He rummaged through it and came up with a pack of G-4 explosive. Pinching off a small amount, he wired in a detonator with practiced ease. Once the smoke from the blast cleared, Sam gestured for Sharon to lead on.

Beyond the remains of the door was a long corridor, lined on either side with more doors, at least a dozen, all similar to the one they had just destroyed. Voices shouted from behind those doors, the words muffled.

Stepping up beside Sam, Helo said, "Blow 'em all, man. We're not leaving anyone behind. Not this time."

Sam and Connor got to work while Helo and Maya kept watch behind them and Sharon moved forward, checking the signal strength at each door. The signal remained steady as she made her way down the corridor, until she reached a set of stairs leading up. At the foot of the stairs, the signal jumped in strength and, after a quick look up the steps, she started up.

"Fire in the hole!" Connor shouted and Sharon, only about a quarter of the way up the stairs, which seemed to extend at least two stories, pressed her back against the concrete wall.

The aggregate explosion was deafening. Dust and smoke and bits of concrete flew everywhere and Sharon heard coughing and shouts and Helo's voice cut through it all. "All of you! Head for the pyramid courts in the center of the city. You'll find help there."

Sharon returned her attention to the task at hand. She reached the landing and turned to find a locked gate; the corridor beyond only held four doors, possibly indicating larger holding facilities rather than the individual cells they'd found below. Not waiting for the others, she aimed and fired at the lock box and then kicked in the gate. It crashed into the wall with a resounding clang and Sharon went to the first door on the right.

She heard footsteps, running up the stairs and then Sam asked, "Is she in there?"

A confirming glance at the transponder and Sharon looked back at him. "According to this, yes."

Not bothering to try the handle, knowing it was unlikely to be open, he slung his rifle across his back and dropped to his knees to apply an explosive charge. "Stand back," he said and moved off to the side. Sharon pocketed the transponder and moved to the other side.

The charge he used was strong enough to leave the bent door hanging half off its hinges, but not enough to completely remove it. He kicked it open and entered the room, rifle at the ready, and Sharon followed.

They stepped onto a walkway and looked over the railing. Below, knife in hand and seemingly oblivious to anything happening around her, was Kara. She stood over the body of Cylon model number Two, the one the humans knew as Leoben Conoy. There was blood everywhere.

"Kara!" Sam sprinted down the stairs, skidded at the bottom, but still he landed on his feet and ran across the room to his wife. Sharon was aware of it when the others arrived just as Sam reached Kara and tried to take her into his arms.

The spell she seemed to be under was broken the instant Sam touched her. Kara screamed, a wild, frightening sound, and suddenly Sam Anders was fighting for his life. She turned on him, tried to impale him on the knife that still bore a Cylon's blood.

Sharon and Connor both started down the stairs to help Sam, but Helo bellowed, "Captain Thrace, stand down! That's an order!"

Just as quickly as the attack began, it stopped. Kara, wide-eyed and shaking, stared at Sam, who held a hand tightly against one arm, blood trickling between his fingers where she'd cut him. The knife dropped from Kara's grasp; her eyes never left Sam's shocked face.

No one moved for several seconds and the only sound was Kara's and Sam's harsh breathing until Helo broke the stillness. "Starbuck, we have to get out of here."

Kara blinked once, twice, and visibly relaxed. Breaking the connection with her husband, she looked up at Helo. "I don't give a frak if you _are_ a captain now, Agathon. Don't give me orders." With a last look down at the dead Cylon, she stepped carefully around the body, which brought her closer to Sam. Kara reached up when she was mere centimeters away and cupped his face in the palm of her hand; she didn't seem to realize that her hand was sticky with Leoben's blood. "I'm sorry, Sam." The words were whispered, but Sharon, standing at the foot of the stairs, was close enough to hear both the words and the pain beneath.

Her gaze met Kara's and Sharon backed up a step, giving her space to pass, watched her as she ran up the steps and out the door without a backward glance.

"Gods…" Sam picked up the knife Kara had dropped and turned to follow her. His movement seemed to set the rest of them free. First Maya and then Connor went back out into the corridor. Sharon saw a brief glimpse of someone else outside the door before that person, too, left. With a final look at the body at her feet, Sharon turned, disturbed by what she had seen in Kara's eyes.

When she reached the landing, the others were all gone save Helo, who waited for her. She searched his face for a moment and when she came too close, it was a like a door closed in her face. He turned away from her, as if he was afraid she'd see too much and she realized why the look in Kara's eyes had disturbed her so much – it was the same look on Helo's face as he turned away.

xxxxx

"They used versions of me, didn't they?" Sharon whispers, horrified.

The gap between them suddenly seems so much larger than just a few meters as he stares at her, but then finally, reluctantly, he says simply, "Yes."

"Oh, Helo…" Her own people had used her against him. "Karl." She has to remember not to use his call sign, but it's hard. "Karl, I'm so sorry."

He gives her an attempt at reassurance. "I know it wasn't you."

"Still…"

"No. There's no _still_, Sharon. It wasn't you."

He says nothing more and when Sharon looks at him again, he seems lost in his own thoughts, memories. He shifts, still sitting on the deck, and the scrape of his boots as he pulls his knees up in front of him is somehow too loud.

Finally, Sharon asks, "Can we get past this?"

He looks at her and doesn't answer right away. Then, "I don't know. When I came in here and saw you…" He pauses and looks at his hands, looks back up at her. "Yes. We're going to get through this, Sharon." His expression softens. "If you love me half as much as I love you…" And he smiles at her.

She can't not smile back at him. But then his smile fades as he pushes up from the deck and comes to her, takes her hands in his a little too tightly. She thinks he's fighting demons, just to be able to touch her. He kisses her knuckles and says, "Sharon…" but then hesitates, not knowing quite how to say whatever it is.

"What is it, Karl?"

For what seems like forever, he just looks at her, but finally he takes a deep breath and says, "Sharon, Hera is alive."

Everything stops. There is no breath, no air. No sight, no sound, no sensation at all. No movement. Time ceases to exist. Then…  
…_she looks up and sees herself. She sees herself, gripping her small hand tightly, and she knows that she has just tried to run away, run back to her mother._  
The disorientation of seeing herself, or at least another model Eight, through Hera's eyes – and she knows now without a doubt that she is seeing through her daughter's eyes, somehow – rips at Sharon's psyche. And still she can't breathe. 

All around her are children and controlling those children, carrying them and herding them, are her fellow Cylons. The majority of them seem to be model Eights, but there are several Nines there as well, the ones Kara had known on Caprica as Simon.

As though from a great distance, Sharon hears Helo's voice. _No. That isn't right. He's not Helo anymore. He's Karl. Karl._ But she can't understand what he's saying, only the urgency of it.

The air is warm, cloying. There are no bulkheads or decks, no lights overhead or along the corridors, although there is light, an unpleasant pink to her child's eyes. The surface beneath her feet is soft and yielding, like flesh.

"Sharon! Gods, Sharon!" She feels his hands on her face, frantically trying to rouse her. Her eyes are open; she knows this because the ceiling of her cell slowly comes into focus, just before Karl's face blocks out the sight.

Sharon blinks and her eyes flutter shut. She gasps, begins to cough. There is a great weight on her chest, holding her down, and she tries to move, to push against it, only to realize that it's Karl. And he's not holding her down, but rather kneeling over her.

She opens her eyes again, focuses on his worried face. _Funny. Why am I always surprised at how green his eyes are?_ "Karl." She swallows, her throat tight.

Brushing the hair from her face, Karl visibly relaxes. He remains where he is, supporting his weight on the one arm while he strokes her hair, her face with his other hand. She becomes aware that his knees are on either side of her hips and that they are on the bed.

"Sharon, what happened? You just seemed to… to shut down. What the frak was that?"

She doesn't know how to answer that, doesn't know how to explain to him what she saw through their little girl's eyes, and so, instead, she reaches up to trace a finger over his eyebrows, his jaw, his mouth. She watches as the green of his eyes seems to darken as his pupils dilate. She feels it under her fingertips when he stiffens at her touch, and then he pulls away and a wave of despair washes over her.

But he doesn't move far and she realizes that he's reaching for something in his pocket, so maybe… Maybe he isn't pulling away from her, after all.

He's holding something – a data chip. "Boomer gave this to me. She said it'll help us find the baseship, the one carrying Hera." He leans toward her again, gently strokes the side of her face with his knuckles.

Holding her breath, Sharon slides a hand around to the back of his neck and exerts pressure there, her eyes never leaving his. He resists, at first, shaking with the effort to not pull away. "Karl," she whispers, infusing that one word with all that she feels for him and for them and for their child, their little girl. Somehow, they'll find her, they'll bring her back. Together, they could do anything.

And then his mouth is on hers, the force of his kiss bruising her lips, but she doesn't care. The small pain is more than welcome if it means that he'll stay with her, that she hasn't lost him. Sharon opens her mouth to let him in, to welcome him home.

fin


End file.
